More importantly, these seven days in May showed the Liberals don’t mean well. They hunted down a homosexual for his text messages. They hunted down a heterosexual for his spectral whores. The found a whore and paid her sixty thousand dollars to drive a customer, if she could, to suicide. They told the customer to quit parliament or they’d continue to shriek at him that he’s a thief of union money and a filthy person. They said they felt sorry for him but he had to go. If he didn’t go he had to disfranchise his electors by not voting in the House, on anything.
They said the lower orders couldn’t be trusted to spend money on their kids and it was best they didn’t get any. They said the disabled were all very well in their way but they wouldn’t guarantee they’d spend any money on them. They learned that Gina Rinehart makes two million dollars an hour and said by their silence that she deserved it, unlike the disabled, who didn’t. Though three weeks of Gina’s pay was a billion dollars the disabled couldn’t have any of it. The nation couldn’t afford it.
They said Gina should get more money and pay less carbon tax and tens of thousands of breadwinning public servants should be sacked to give her more money. They said there was no better use her money could be put to than her wars with her weight and her children and the Fairfax board which doesn’t like her.
They called Bob Carr’s saving of the life of Schapelle Corby ‘tricky’. They called the atmosphere of parliament after a popular surplus Budget ‘toxic’. They called for an election sixteen months early, as they did in 1975.
They’re a pretty nasty bunch. They have no policies much of their own except gouging eighty million out of the money we currently get and spend.
And Murdoch, a man unfit to run an international company according to the Mother of Parliaments reckons their election is inevitable. They lost six hundred thousand votes in a month and there are fifteen months to go and they’re bound to win. Bound to win.
Discuss.
Name:
So Bob, the ABC report [ABC website] and evidence that Michael Lawler was interfering with HSU politics, using union meeting minutes, emails etc while Kathy Jackson was blowing her whistle during FWA investigations into Craig Thomson. Where does that leave things? Doesn’t warrant a headline this morning?
Absolutely. Sounds like Kathy framed him and Michael protected her after consultation with his close friend (and mine no longer) Tony Abbott.
And the media reported this corrupted behaviour by Lawler in February.
It’s a bit ridiculous asking Ross anything, he only became president on February 29 after Lawler set up the former president over Kathy Jackson.
The thing is it is February when Jackson was claiming that the government were interfering when it was her all along.
\
More front than the “Queen Mary as me grannie used to say.
Yup
Poor Thom(p)son. Even the great Barry Humphries thinks he is a crook (wonderful performance on Q & A, reminscent of a pre-Mateus Ellis). I do wonder each day as I read ETT (alongside the other 31 subscribers) why your friend Craig does not just embrace his demons, drink and eat to excess and fulfil his destiny as the Les Patterson of this insipid new paradigm. He could take over as Minister for Shark Conservation, become cultural attache to the red light district of Bali or perhaps take the role with your good friend Gerard as Food and Beverage consultant of the Sydney Institute.
I predict that if he embraces his inner Les he will keep his seat and restore dignity to the great party of the Unionss, unlike the myriad of souls undertaking the slow march towards the cliff in 2013 longside Albo (surely the basket weavers will get him), Windsor, Oakeshott and Swanny.
Prove that I lie.
Humphries is very funny, but you are not, you sound, and most likely look like Les Patterson, an ugly Australian.
Compliments and I don’t even know you Helvi. You sound like the type of man who would go for Les however.
Don’t get to excited Bob want to look at latest Morgan poll 70 year record low for ALP 2PP 61.5% LNP to 38.5%.
How many million voters to LNP now?
Whole of HSU hierarchy likely corrupt doesn’t excuse Thomson!
Sorry I meant 38.5% ALP to 61.5% LNP.
I can smell a Rudd awakening for the ALP.
What did the Katter Party get?
Primary Greens 13% (up 2.5) Others (KAP?) 10.5% (down 1.5%), LNP 49% (3.5%) ALP 27.5% (down 4.5%).
So ALP vote moved to Greens and LNP not KAP.
Though KAP now has point of difference with his stance on EMA’s that wouldn’t be apparent in this poll.
But if the Greens and the KAP preferences go to Labor and one Independent Labor is on 51.
So what are you talking about?
I recall being told that the real measure when an election was not imminent was the preferred prime minister figures. That, so the argument went, was the best measure of how voters would actually behave in the ballot box after an election campaign.
it is easy to see why this might be so….Abbott is just not a popular guy. It is easy enough to see what ALP has to do to have a fighting chance of winning. Appeal to the best rather than the worst traditions of the labour movement; and make peace between Rudd and Gillard. Too hard, maybe.
Why not Carr and Gillard?
Well, here in Victoria Carr has mainly been known as a James Ellroy fan; apart from being premier of NSW of course. By which I mean his image is as the labour figure with literary and cultural interests….which is fine so far as it goes.
But there never was war between Gillard and Carr so far as I know, or the general public knows, so there is not a rift to heal. Rudd continues to be comparatively popular on the street; I think most of us have got what the problem with him is, something about being a damaged narcissistic control freak; but the fact is that doesn’t seem too bad when you look at what else is on offer. He comes across as honest, and clever, and genuinely interested in doing the right thing for Australia as best he understands it. It looks as if there are lines he would draw, things he would not do for power. Wrong for all I know, but that is how he looks.
You mustn’t think that I am a Ruddite, I’m far from it. I was disgusted when he succeeded Latham rather than Gillard that great diappointment, and depressed that a man so alien to labour tradition could become leader. But he looks good in the company he keeps.
If he and Gillard could bring themselves to publicly and convincingly bury the hatchet they would look like reponsible adults capable putting aside their personal spites for the greater good. Not such a big deal, real people do that every day, dovorced parents for example. Rudd would have to realise that another le
Premature publication.
Rudd would have to realise that another leadership change would be disaster for the ALP, and accept her leadership, opposing her only on real principle. And Gillard should have him in Cabinet.This would be a good look. But probably too hard for politicians.
The way a third leadership to change to Abbott was disastrous, you mean?
What are you talking about?
Different story in government and opposition, for several reasons but one of than is that fewer people are looking at you. Another is that an opposition has by definition not been elected to power with a given leader.
People don’t like governments that are continually changing leaders; again there are several reasons for that.People like to think that polticians at least aspire to be there to serve the people, continual power struggles are a bad look.
But you know all that. Everybody does.
1969Nonsense. The Coalition in government had four Prime Ministers in four years and still won in 1969.
WHAT are you talking about?
You have been reduced to using a dishonest argument, Bob Ellis, and I am saddened for the obvious reasons but also puzzled as to why you thought it necessary.
I’m going to have to ban you from receiving my posts effective tomorrow. Don’t take it hard, concentrate on the useful work you are doing. (In politics not Shakespeare)
On the subject at hand:
Holt died in office, replaced temporarily by McEwen, then Gorton was elected. Who was the fourth, are you counting Menzies who resigned before the 1966 election and was replaced by Holt?
This is not the same as one politician overthrowing another, and you know that. When MCMahon overthrew Gorton voters didn’t like it at all. Did they? If you think voters didn’t mind Gillard replacing Rudd then you really have not been paying attention. But you don’t think that of course.
One of the deep reasons why voters don’t like governments changing leaders is that it makes them feel insecure.
But there are other reasons…consider this, voters like to think that off-scene, when the working day is done, politicians from different parties get on OK. They can, voters like to think, have a laugh and a drink together. They don’t like to think that personal hatreds and spites rule at the top….even more so, then, they like to think that a certain solidarity and amity governs relations _within_ the party. Continual power struggles are a bad bad look.
And you know that.
Voters don’t want to think, or maybe know, that they live in a cacocracy.
McEwen being Holt’s Country Party deputy, who was an acting PM only after Holt’s death.
Abbott should have and would have been voted out after having Pauline Hanson sent down for a non-crime and abusing the dying hero “Bernie Banton and the war Veteran hero Graham Edwards who had his legs blown off by and Australian mine.
But it’s pretty dreadful when the approval rating of both leaders of major parties is only 61% combined.
For all those who keep blaming Rudd for the woes of the ALP though I suggest you read Shitstorm about his handling of the GFC which was backed up again last week by Ken Henry.
Here is the thing for the week though.
the so-called Thomson affair is over, dead as a dodo.
AS soon as the evidence of real collusion between the only complainer about the HSU and the
Vice President and the President who was forced to stand down because he ignored the complaints and simply turned them over to Lawler the story died.
There is not another leg for the media to pin their so-called case on.
Maybe now they might actually read some of the report instead of FWA’s babble.
Watch the media back away stealthily from their gung-ho stances.
And well done Marilyn.
Sure Abbott isn’t wildly popular. Very few conservative opposition leaders are. John Howard was hated with a vicious passion by all those who seek to tie their souls to the promises of any leader.
But surely Bob knows that he will make an outstanding Prime Minister. Strong, smart, fair, humble, self-depricating, alive with Catholic social doctrine and not led gloomily by his own lights. A cheerful warrior. All the strength and authority of Howard with none of the perceived cheapness and nastiness.
The ALP has some good characters left, with Carr clearly topping the list, but it has no spirit anymore. None of the moral force i remember under the Beezer. No passionate, engaging vision beyond the platitudes of big business. It richly deserves a long period in political purgatory for it to recover it’s conscience or perish. And the sooner this judgement occurs, the better it will be for Australia.
Roll on Abbott and his obvious strength. His goodness and wisdom will be proven in office and the dead wood, the moral decay and spineless worms can be hosed out of the building